Yesterday I picked up some more corn from my fathers farm to supplement my chicken feed. I tend to mix wheat with layers pellets about half and half. They don't lay quite as much as they would on just pellets but I think it makes the eggs taste slightly better and it keeps the cost down of the feed.
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| My feed mix - 50/50 layers pellets and wheat |
I know some recommend that you only feed the wheat in the afternoon but I don't get back until late evening so I find mixing like this works quite well (I also chuck in some grit as well for good measure).
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| Feed storage - I prefer metal bins for feed but so far the plastic one has been fine |
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| Wheat from the farm |
Most of my chickens have access to grass and dirt along with weeds and other things I chuck them so they can supplement their feed a little bit. But I was wondering, with the price of layers pellets going up every year, if you were going to make a complete chicken feed up from scratch (and potentially grow it) was would it need to contain? I have ready access to wheat, barley, oats and oil seed rape, what else would I need and what mix would I use? Would they need anything doing to them (rolling, cleaning, etc?)
Does anyone else supplement their chicken feed or make their own up from scratch? And how effective do you think it is?
(Oh yeah and still no baby!)
NO baby, I had you with a little one in my mind. You need to take her out for a ride on a bumpy road that will jog things around. Seriously it happens when it is time. I have planted some small plots of wheat and other grain for winter cover and if I get grain I am going to mix it with some corn for chicken food.
ReplyDeleteI've always fancied growing my own chicken food (and other animals). I guess complete self sufficiency is the final goal but one I don;t think I'll ever be able to hit!
DeleteNo baby yet? He'll come when he's ready.
ReplyDeleteI feed my chickens scraps. Basically, what we don't eat gets fed to the animals. What the dogs don't eat, the chickens polish off. They seem to eat anything. Rice, sweetcorn, meat, remains of Alex's scrambled egg breakfast, the tender green shoots of my nascent garden, ants, beetles. The goose even attacks and eats snakes.
I like the sound of that goose! Although it might be a bit bored round here with only dog walkers to attack! Our chickens get fed all the weeds and stuff from the garden but I don't think they'd last ong as free ranged birds around here.
DeleteI have been making chicken feed for a couple people. I use a mixture of 500lbs oats/peas, 1000lbs barley, and then either 250lbs soymeal/100lbs camelina meal or 350lbs of flax seed, and then I add heavy clover screenings to bring it to 2,000lbs and/or bring the protein level to 15%.
ReplyDeleteI run it through a mixer/grinder with a screen with large holes.
I use molasses to keep the dust down. Sometimes I throw in a couple bales of alfalfa hay. Chickens love little pieces of alfalfa.
However, if you don't have a mixer grinder and access to a wide variety of grains it is a little more difficult.
If you can't grind it then I like barley and peas. Peas are excellent feed as they are high in protein and amino acids. TCracked wheat might be easier to find than barley. The beards in the barley are sometimes hard to deal with.
Chickens love alfalfa or clover hay but it needs to be ground.
In my humble opinion
I got so carried away talking about my mix I forgot about yours.
ReplyDeleteAccording to my handbook, "feeds and Feed" by Morrison Company, copyright 1936... Rapeseed oil meal is 34 percent protein, pumpkin seed have higher fat content but less protein. Field peas are 23 percent protein but have less fat content than Rapeseed.
I often mix feed with a mixture of oats and barley at a 7 parts oats/barley to one part soy so you could substitute the rapeseed for soy.
I think an addition of oyster shell would then make a pretty good feed.
Cheers for that. some good advice in there (I did have you in mind when I wrote the post!) I might try and mix in the barley and rape to one batch of chickens and see how they do. Cheers for the advice!
DeleteThe old-timers never bought ANY feed for chickens. Time to do a little online research, maybe.
ReplyDeleteAh, but they also left them to be completely free ranged. Mine have access to grass but if they wonder too far they become a meal for a dog walkers dog! Also I want my chickens to still be quite high yielding as we like to sell the eggs for a small profit.
DeleteWe used to buy our feed as pellets. Then we just fed the chickens what we mixed up for our hogs rye, barley wheat and corn. Then we just stopped feeding them altogether and left it up to them to find grain, scratch for bugs, catch flies (they are all free range) We save money and the eggs are fantastic. In the winter we add a little in their yard but not much. Mostly water. Seems the less we worried the more they thrived.
ReplyDeleteSounds good but ours can't free range due to predators. Just reducing the cost would make it better on our pockets but I still want them to be hgh yielding animals to keep our customers happy!
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